


Stay With Me

by sistergrimmerin



Category: Hunger Games - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistergrimmerin/pseuds/sistergrimmerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie and Finnick had each other, if nothing else, and then they had nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Defiant

1\. Defiant

 

He is not the boy who volunteered for his cousin, for the lingering ghost of his father's memory, not anymore. That boy wouldn't have known how to save Annie's life, though.

 

"If she dies, the Capitol loses its favorite Victor," he breathes to President Snow.

 

"You can be replaced with someone more cooperative," President Snow points out. "I'll be very, very cooperative if she lives," Finnick said.

 

"How cooperative?"

  
"I'll be whatever you want, President Snow. But if you lay a finger on Annie, if she dies... I believe that you'll discover exactly how uncooperative I can be, President Snow."

 

There is a marked hesitation, then a grim, proud smile breaks out over Snow's features. "I believe we will require your presence tonight, Mr. Odair. And for many nights thereafter."

 

_What have I just done?_

 

02\. Powder

 

He found her collapsed on his bedroom floor with powder trailing from her fingertips, and that was the most terrifying moment of his life.

 

03\. Grateful

 

They never had much to be grateful for but each other.


	2. Decent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More drabbles.

04\. Decent

"Are you decent, Annie?" Finnick called.

She flew down the stairs into his arms, clothed in a red silk bathrobe and pressed her lips to his.

"Oh, Finn, aren't I always?"

"Annie, you don't have to--,"

"I want to. Remember the first time we did this?"

He smiled, relaxing. "How could I forget? I love you, Annie." He reaches down to kiss her and finds a bruise on her collarbone.

"Was someone here, Annie?"

Her eyes meet his. "Yeah. A man from the Capitol." Hastening to reassure him, she said, "Nothing happened. I told him you weren't here and he flirted a bit. Then he left."

Finn's heart pounded in his chest. "Did he want something from me?"

"No. He wanted me to do what you do." Annie's voice was very soft and not at all scared. (For years, Annie's father had done the same thing to him the Capitol now did to him.)

"What did you say?" Finnick asked around a wall of fire in his throat.

"I played stupid," Annie said. "I bumped myself on the wall just to prove it. But I could do it, you know. I'm good at pretending."

"No, Annie. They want me."

"I'm a poor trade, I know. But maybe--,"

"Annie!"

"If it has to be one of us--,"

"Annie, please. I can't do what you do. I can't wait home for you, and you don't know the Capitol like I do. Please. Please."

"All right," she said, relenting.

"Finn?" she said in a small voice.

"Annie?"

"I love you, too."


	3. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More drabbles.

5\. Ghosts

_Finnick and Annie's sketchbook was their personal secret. It detailed their ideal family life; children with sea-green eyes, a house by the shore, what they would tell them when they grew up. Annie wrote the poems, found the shells, and used bits of hair ribbon to decorate the pages. It was begun when they were thirteen and eleven and never quite finished, although it was incredibly detailed._

(And over a decade after its beginning, Katniss Everdeen will find this sketchbook while searching for clues as to how to perform a District Four funeral in a sad, cold house and will find herself poring over the pages of an imaginary family for hours in a creaky old attic, lost in someone else's dashed hopes and dreams and not-quite crying. And when Haymitch Abernathy sees her crouched over the journal, he will fall to the floor with her, reading it, and when he is done, take the girl that he sometimes thinks of as the daughter he should have had, that looks like the daughter he could have had, the girl that made him remember he wasn't helpless, the girl on fire that woke him out of twenty years of sleep, into his arms and confess to her while her head is against his chest, “Ghosts freak me out, too.”

And he will feel her breathing slow against his chest and a small sliver of a smile appear on her face for the first time he's ever seen it, and finally, he realizes that of all the things that almost killed him, the thing that _will_ kill him is if she dies before he does, because he loves her like a real person, not like the daughter he never had, and he will reflect on the tragedy of Annie Cresta and what made her retreat from the world, what made her never want to know the child she bore and that her adored Finnick would have loved. And he will discover in that tragedy a shred of salvation that passed by everyone who was actually in it, and then he will begin the slow and treacherous crawl out and back in and finally out of a bottle, because Katniss needs him.)


End file.
